Kara: The Heian Era is usually taken as 794-1185, if you want a date on which to peg this story in Japanese history.

Thanks to Keri for being the brilliant historian she is, and for being a good enough friend to put up with me in my fangirl moods. Seriously, most people run when I mention the magical words 'Kazama Yuuto'. ^.^

THE TALE OF HIKARI
CHAPTER 4
SHIRAGIKU: WHITE CHRYSANTHEMUM

In the dim light before dawn, the garden was something out of the world of spirits. The sinking moon washed everything of all its colour, while the semi-opaque veil that Hikari wore made it seem as if she were looking at everything through a thick mist. Maples rose slim and grey in front of her; the flowers were ghostly imitations of their normal selves; the sky was pale and oddly translucent. Hurrying down the path, she half-expected a ghost to appear from the bushes, or a demon to rise in front of her.

A chill travelled up her spine, as she heard the rustle of leaves and saw a white shape through the trees. For a terrifying moment, she thought that her wild imaginings had come to life, then she realised it was only the peasant. As they had arranged the previous day, he was waiting for her beneath the maples where she had fallen. He was leaning against one of the trees, seemingly as comfortable in his surroundings as if he had been born to the estate rather than the village that served it.

Not for the first time that morning, Hikari contemplated breaking the promise that she had made to him. Any other woman in her situation would have informed her father, and allowed him to handle it for her. She certainly would not have gone after the man in question with the intention of confronting him, only to end up agreeing to teach him to read and write. 'I’ve been in the provinces too long', she thought in exasperation, 'I’m beginning to lose all sense of what is right for a woman of my station. I should go back to my house and put an end to this chapter in my life.'

However, she carried on walking down the path towards him.

When the peasant noticed her, he gave her a sweet, slightly lopsided smile. The dim light had subtly altered him too - his blue eyes were darker and the shadows lent his youthful face more definition. Inexplicably, she felt her stomach flutter within her, as if brushed by the wing of a bird taking flight.

“Lady Yagami,” he bowed deeply, “You came.”

Inclining her own head in reply, “I came. Shall we get started immediately?”

He nodded, “We’d better. They want us to start work early today to make up for our holiday yesterday.”

With a shock of realisation, “Oh no! I forgot supplies for our lesson! I meant to bring ink and paper and brushes, but it was not easy getting ready so early and I must have forgotten them in the rush.”

He smiled at her, “Then it’s a good thing that I made provisions.”

Curious, Hikari followed him through another clump of maples and saw that he had prepared a place for them to work on a flat rock. Fashioned out of sticks and some hair, two brushes were laid out on it. In between them rested a wooden bowl of dark liquid and a few sheets of paper weighted down by a pebble. She knelt in front of it, while he sprawled next to her and looked at her expectantly.

“Is this fine, Lady Yagami?”

“Did you make all of these tools yourself?” she asked in amazement, picking up a brush and touching the soft bristles with the tip of her finger. Cut from the tail of some animal, they had been bound to the stick with a piece of cloth. It was nothing like the expensive brushes her father imported from China for his paintings, but it had been ingeniously devised and crafted. Somehow too, the crudity of his implements served to underscore how well he wielded them.

“Yes,” he said apologetically, “I’m sorry about their poorness. You’re probably used to much better.”

“I was merely surprised by how well you had made them from such poor materials,” she smiled at him, even though she knew he could only half-see it through the fabric of her veil, “Thank you for letting me use them.”

His cheeks colouring slightly, he turned away from her to look at the sheet of paper in front of him, “We had better get started. You’ve seen my painting; I want to see yours. Why don’t you show me how you paint a chrysanthemum, Lady Yagami?”

Hikari hesitated for a moment, before dipping the tip of her makeshift brush in the bowl. To her surprise, it came up as black as if it truly had been ink instead of ashes. Remembering her father’s lessons, she traced out several, smooth strokes on the paper in the correct configuration for a chrysanthemum. Even to her own eyes, however, it seemed crude and messy - the strokes were unbalanced, and the ink bled into the paper. She knew it was due not to the brush but to the artist wielding it.

“I told you my father would be glad if I were half as good as you were,” she said lightly, “Although that seems impossible.”

“There’s always hope,” he replied, “I know what your problem is.”

“You do?”

With a smile, he produced a white flower from the sleeve of his robe and handed it to her. It was a chrysanthemum - he must have picked it from her father’s garden before the lesson. She stared at it in puzzlement.

“You have never really looked at a chrysanthemum. As a result, your painting does not look like one as well,” he told her, “You’re painting what you expect to see when you look at the flower, and not the reality.”

Twisting the flower between her fingers, Hikari frowned. She remembered her father telling her that the great Chinese masters would spend weeks studying a single flower before putting ink to paper. It would take years of study for them to consider themselves compotent, let alone skilled, in drawing it.

“I understand. . . . I think.”

“Good,” he replied, “Take off your veil, look at it properly and try again.”

Shocked by the impropriety of his suggestion, she turned to him, “My veil?”

“Unless you want to make a study of chrysathemums in the mist,” he said with a little laugh, “Also, it has to tangle up your arms, and that can’t be any help when you’re drawing.”

“I can’t! It’d be too disgraceful!” she quickly got to her feet, brushing dried leaves and dust off her robes. He rose too.

“Why?” he sounded genuinely perplexed, which he probably was. In this deserted province, he could not have seen too many ladies of noble blood, and peasant women did not hide their faces behind screens or veils. He could not know that it would be almost as disgraceful as stripping naked in front of him.

She struggled to find a way to explain it to him, “Because . . . because . . . you’re a man and it would just be indecent.”

He did not seem to understand, “But I’ve seen your face, Lady Yagami.”

“That was a disgrace. I should never, ever have let it happen.”

“I’ve seen other women’s faces,” he persisted, “And yours is not that different. Why do you have to hide it, when they don’t?”

“Because those women were peasants. Everyone knows that they have no sense of . . . .” she trailed off in mid-sentence when she saw the expression on his face. The muscles of his jaw were tight, his eyes burnt as blue as the core of a flame, and Hikari knew she had offended him. For a peasant, he had pride enough to rival the emperor himself. She let out a deep breath, “I apologise. That was wrong of me to say. I am sure that your wife is a fine woman, for example.”

“If I had one, I’m sure she would be,” he smiled at her, his anger gone in an instant, “I don’t, but your apology is still accepted.”

“You are still unmarried?” she asked in surprise. As young as he seemed, he was still of marriagable age, and she would have expected any peasant woman would have been glad to have him. He had good looks, unexpected talents and a certain, indefinable sweetness that was entirely his own. He would have made a better husband than any for which the women of his classes were accustomed to pray.

“I’ve never met any woman with whom I’d want to spend the rest of my life,” he said lightly, “What about you, Lady Yagami? Why are you still in the provinces in your father’s house?”

“My father has not arranged a marriage for me yet,” she sighed, “If he does not do so soon, I may have to spend the rest of my life serving in the temple at Ise. I may . . . .” she paused, suddenly realising that she was telling the most intimate details of her life to a peasant. She felt her cheeks grow warm beneath their powder. It had been so long since she had someone with whom she could talk freely - she had felt strange about speaking to Mimi after overhearing the miserable marriage that awaited her - and there was something about him that made it easy to confide in him, “It doesn’t matter. We need to get back to our lessons, anyway.”

“I’m sure my suggestions will help you,” he said with confidence, sitting down in front of the flat rock again, “Now, can I show you what I’ve learnt?”

Smiling slightly to herself at his little-boy enthusiasm, she knelt next to him, “Go ahead.”

Wetting his brush in the ink, he dashed off the four characters she had shown him the other day. She tilted her head to examine them, her veil parting slightly. They were clumsy and childish, but they were certainly recognisable as his name in both hiragana and kanji.

“You need to practise, but that’s a good start,” she picked up her own brush and painting a few characters onto another sheet of paper, then explained, “White chrysanthemum. It seems appropriate.”

“And how do you write white morning-glory, Lady Yagami?” he asked in a suspiciously innocent voice. She turned to look at him and saw the glimmer of laughter in his blue eyes. She knew she should have been offended by what was yet another impudent reference to their encounter in the garden, but found to her surprise that she was only amused.

“Let me show you,” she added another three characters beside the first set, then smiled and pointed to them with the end of her brush, “White morning-glory. Or, as most people would read them, Yagami Hikari.”

Takeru only laughed.

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The rising sun was just beginning to pinken the sky when Izumi saw her step-daughter coming up the path. The past few days, she had woken up feeling unwell, and she found that the cool, clean air of the morning benefitted her. She was sure it had something to do with the child she was carrying inside her. She wished she could ask Hiruko about it, but her husband’s other wife hated her. She resented her youth and her beauty; she resented the way Izumi held his eyes when they slipped as casually off her as they might a piece of furniture; she resented the fact that the omens suggested she might be carrying another son for him.

Izumi took another deep, cleansing breath, as she watched Hikari walk slowly towards the house. Even in the heavy robes tied up to her ankles and the bulky travelling-veil, the younger woman moved with the grace of a dancer. In her right hand, she held a white flower, and she was humming softly to herself. She looked so happy and free that Izumi almost envied her.

Only a year ago, she must have seemed the same way to others. She remembered cool, autumn mornings in Miyako when she would wake before dawn to find Junpei still sleeping beside her. She would lie awake and watch the slow rhythm of his breathing and think about their future together. After they married and they would marry, they would set up home together in the city, and it would be as lovely and elegant outside as it was on the inside. She would have a garden full of flowers and a new set of screens for every season. And they would have children to fill it, two strong sons and a daughter as lovely as the cherry-blossoms. Her hand went to her still-flat stomach. It seemed like those were the dreams of another woman, like her whole life before coming to the provinces had been a beautiful dream she had once had.

She wondered with a slight pang when Hikari would awake from her own dream to find herself very far away from home and married to a man she did not love.

“Good morning, Hikari,” she called softly.

The girl started as if she had been caught doing something wrong, then turned to face her and stammered a hasty greeting, “Izumi . . . Good morning . . . I was just taking my usual walk. . . . I was by myself, and I didn’t expect to see anyone. I hope I haven’t disturbed you.”

“Not in the least. I wasn’t feeling well, and I needed some fresh air,” Izumi replied, puzzled by how nervous her step-daughter was.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll go inside and remove this veil,” Hikari said.

“I’ll follow you shortly,” she replied, “Maybe I can brush your hair for you.”

“Thank you. That'd be very kind.”

With a little frown on her face, Izumi watched Hikari walk up the path and into the house. The more she thought about the situation, the stranger it seemed to her. Her step-daughter took walks most mornings, true, but seldom before dawn and she never could be bothered to put on a veil for them.

If she did not know there were no families of suitable birth anywhere in the province, she would have sworn that Hikari had gone to meet a lover. Coming up the path, she had had the lightness, the joy, the distant dreaminess of a woman falling in love about her. The grace with which she had walked, the song on her lips, the way she had carried the white flower in her hands, everything about her had spoken of a woman in love. That was plainly impossible, however. There were no men within a thousand ri of the estate, other than peasants and members of her own family. Either would be too shameful to contemplate for a woman of Hikari’s birth and breeding. (1)

It was a mystery, therefore - and one that Izumi fully intended to solve.

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TO BE CONTINUED

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NOTES:

(1) Admittedly, Genji loses his virginity to his step-mother, but that would have been beyond the pale even by the Heian Era’s more permissive standards. Genji was a bit of a . . . slut, to put it kindly. ^.^